"The Surface is a nice tablet. The design and aesthetic are pleasing, the feel in the hands, particularly of the kickstand and magnetic cover connection is excellent. But is it worth buying on the day of release?" After these three reviews, I still want a Surface RT. As much as I think Metro - and especially its applications - has a long way to go, I feel like I should reward the fact that Microsoft dares to be different. Too bad Microsoft doesn't want me to buy one.

"I believe Acer has a Windows 8 tablet for $499 (same price as Surface) which can run traditional x86 applications and where the garden door is left open."

That's only the case for desktop apps, but people are obviously buying a tablet in the first place because they want to use it as a *tablet*. Otherwise they would just get a laptop. Being able to do both with one device is a nice value-added feature, but it doesn't excuse the walled garden on tablet applications.

And to be honest, I kind of want an ARM device anyways to be able to dual boot android and have one device running both, but we know MS is banning that as well.

"And I am almost certain some enterprising hacker will make it so Windows RT tablets can run ARM compiled programs.
At least, that's my hope."

We've heard plenty of excuses for walled gardens coming from the other big camp, due we really need to have apologists repeating these for microsoft? Today maybe one's iphone can be rooted, but that's only because apple bugs exist in the various models. An unintentional privilege escalation vulnerability permits the owner to compromise the device's security on demand to gain root access, thereby overriding apple's mandatory app policies.

Is this really the model of open computing that we want to stand behind? Do we really want to applaud these closed devices because they have security vulnerabilities? Microsoft's walled garden security may be stronger than apple's, probably in part because they learned from apple's mistakes. This is old news now, but microsoft made sure the UEFI firmware's secure boot feature was designed to enable them to lockout owners from the chain of trust. Microsoft even requires manufacturers to disable any override capability on ARM devices carrying windows. Even if a temporary root exploit is found, it won't be able to modify the system to remain rooted for long. I don't want to loose access to my unapproved sideload apps because I lost root when I rebooted my tablet on vacation, but with secure boot that's a very real possibility.

I predicted this whole shenanigan, that secure boot was just a disguised way of protecting walled gardens from owner tampering rather than simply protecting owners from malware tampering. I wish I were wrong about it.

I predicted this whole shenanigan, that secure boot was just a disguised way of protecting walled gardens from owner tampering rather than simply protecting owners from malware tampering. I wish I were wrong about it.

There's no doubt in my mind that curated computing is not done for the benefit of the curated, but for the benefit of the curators.

I also think "curated computing" should be a cause for alarm because the biggest players (Apple, Google, Microsoft) all have aspirations to be part of "big media". I see them as the equivalent of social climbers trying to marry their way into big media, with their "dowries" being promises to lock down/restrict anything that could be a threat to big media interests.

And longer-term, I think it will have a stifling effect on technological innovation. In the history of computers, many advances (arguably the most important ones) were the direct result of someone taking an existing technology, and finding a clever way to misuse it. But if curated computing becomes the norm, that will become impossible (or at least much more difficult).

I believe Acer has a Windows 8 tablet for $499 (same price as Surface) which can run traditional x86 applications and where the garden door is left open.

That's only the case for desktop apps, but people are obviously buying a tablet in the first place because they want to use it as a *tablet*. Otherwise they would just get a laptop. Being able to do both with one device is a nice value-added feature, but it doesn't excuse the walled garden on tablet applications.

[...]

I kind of want an ARM device anyways to be able to dual boot android and have one device running both, but we know MS is banning that as well.

I'm the last guy recommending people buy into Windows 8, but that's not entirely accurate.

Granted it doesn't work 100% on all hardware yet and you have to futz with grub to dualboot, but it is possible to run both on the ACER unlike on the Surface tablet. Plus should you decide to tire of Windows 8, you could always wipe it and install Linux on it...

That's a good point, I don't really know much about the x86 port of android. I was actually using "android" as an umbrella term for all android flavors including cyanogenmod, which is what I'd want to install, but never less you are right about android-x86.

Their website didn't answer many of my basic questions: Will it run all off the shelf (ARM) android applications? I certainly don't want to be limited to a handful of apps which have been ported back to x86. It needs to be able to run the ARM packages found in the app store with good performance. However my experience with the android emulation tools used for development under x86 linux has been extremely poor even on a high end machine.

If you've had any actual experience with the android-x86 port, I'd love to hear back!

I couldn't find anything like it for sale, do you have any more recent information? I wonder if bootloaders are genuinely unlocked (which goes against microsoft's requirements)? Can you install anything other than the manufacture's build of android? Do you know if the manufacturer build supports sideloading? Please send links if you've got them.

It's the right idea, even if the device was more of a desktop computer than a portable tablet one.

I predicted this whole shenanigan, that secure boot was just a disguised way of protecting walled gardens from owner tampering rather than simply protecting owners from malware tampering. I wish I were wrong about it.

I suspect the idea might be to enable subsidised hardware ecosystem - OEMs selling tablets & laptops below cost, but getting a slice from software sales in the marketplace made on their devices.

Of course, that would be feasible only if MS & the hw+sw platform can fairly reliably assure non-tempering of the installed OS - that would be what the OEMs want in such scenario. And a relatively acceptable scenario overall.